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Sunday, October 19, 2014

I was recently in Great Village to check on the yard restoration at the Elizabeth Bishop House. I am pleased to say that things are progressing well. The porch foundation is reconstructed thanks to Deverne Rushton. We are still awaiting a new front step, but it will be done in the very near future. It was decided to hold off seeding the front lawn because the work on the new bridge in Great Village will have an affect on the roadway right in front of the house. Once that work is done, the front yard, small as it is, can be fully restored.

All the heavy lifting and earth moving are done thanks to Cory Spencer. With the mild fall we have so far enjoyed, many warm summer-like days, the grass is already growing back in the areas that received the tons of gravel. You can see the blush of green emerging in the earth. This part of the lawn needs no re-seeding. Much of the grass may actually return before the snow flies. If we could harvest grass, we'd have a good income! It was so heartening to see the yard starting to look like itself again.

Part of the purpose of my most recent visit was to tend to some more regular yard work (raking leaves, putting gardens to sleep, and setting out material for the Fall Clean Up in Colchester County). There was still flood debris to pick up, but more manageable amounts than that immediately after the event, which Cory dealt with. A few friends came by to help out. I want to thank Rita Wilson, Rosaria Campbell, Darlene MacIvor and Patti Sharpe for bringing their tools and taking time out of a beautiful Saturday. And an extra thank you to Patti for taking the photos I am posting in this entry.

One thinks of William Carlos Williams.

I want to thank all those who have contributed to the EB House Yard
Restoration Appeal so far. I will be putting up a list of contributors in the
near future. Your support has been truly helpful and deeply appreciated.

Wednesday, October 8, 2014

On the morning of 22 September 2014, a sudden and
significant flood occurred in Great
Village, N.S. The
Elizabeth Bishop House was right in the middle of this unexpected event, which
was caused by over 100mm of rain falling in a very short period of time. (There
is speculation in the village of other external factors that exacerbated this
intense rainfall, but that is a debate for another place and time.) The house
was surrounded by rushing water, but thanks to forethought by previous owners,
it came through the flood just fine. You can see my accounts of the flood and
its affects in the posts below.

The yard of the house did not fare so well. The driveway was
washed away and a significant amount of gravel was deposited in the yard. The
front porch foundation and steps were affected and must be rebuilt. All in all,
considering the intensity of the event, this damage is manageable. Even so,
restoring the EB House yard, which was always lovely, and repairing the front
porch will require significant effort and expense. We have insurance for the
house, but it will not cover the yard restoration work. The porch might be
covered, but there is a significant deductible.

(Photo by Patti Sharpe)

In the manner of a crowd-funding campaign, the owners of the
EB House are launching an appeal for help with the yard restoration work, which
is now underway. Any contribution, however small, will be deeply appreciated
and will go directly to this project. Giving $20 will help a lot. If you would
like to help out, you can send a cheque payable to the Elizabeth Bishop House
to Sandra Barry (P.O. Box 235, Middleton,
Nova Scotia, B0S
1P0). Unfortunately, we are not able to
provide tax receipts.

We will post reports about the progress of the restoration
work on this blog and let our kind supporters know how their contributions
have helped. The posts below tell the first parts of
this story. Thanks to all those who have already helped, especially the folks in Great Village,
and to all who have written to express their concern and support. We are most
grateful for the community, the family, that surrounds the Elizabeth Bishop
House.

Sunday, October 5, 2014

Right off the top, I want to thank Cory Spencer and Deverne
Rushton for their hard and good work with the yard restoration work at the
Elizabeth Bishop House. This restoration began earlier this week and is still
underway, but wonderful progress has been made.

Cory is the young man who has kept the EB House yard looking
so good during the summer, for the past four years. After the flood, he came by
to assess things and earlier this week, he tackled restoring the driveway and
removing the huge quantity of gravel that had been deposited in the back yard.
Part of this gravel came from the parking lot of Layton’s Store (between the antique shops).
Part of it came from the shoulder of the road and the head of the driveway,
which washed out completely. Cory returned some of the gravel to the parking
lot and used the rest to rebuild the driveway and fill in around the
foundation. Cory also righted quite a few trees and shrubs which had been
lifted out of the ground, many tilted at strange, Bishop-esque angles (EB was
fond of things that were tilted off the vertical or horizontal axis).

Deverne is our steadfast and trusted carpenter/handyman, who
can do just about everything else. He took on the task of repairing the
foundation of the front port and will be re-building the front step.

I went up today with my sister, Brenda Barry (who is also
one of the owners of the house), to check on the progress and take some
photographs, so I could update all those interested.

As you can see by the photographs included here (taken by
Brenda, the yard is starting to look more like itself, more normal. There is
still work for Cory and Deverne to do, and later in October, we will be
organizing a little work party to do some additional clean up (especially to
remove debris that was also deposited in the yard); but it was so heartening to
see such good progress and to know that things are being set to rights after
such a serious flood.

One quite curious thing: the patch of roses at the very
front of the house, right on the road, had been completely covered by raging
water and the shoulder of the road washed out around them, but when the water
receded, it was apparent that they seemed to come through just fine. The photo
of the rose included here was taken today, their glowing pink contrasting with
the brownness all around.

We are relieved and grateful that with some hard work the EB House will be returned to its pleasant state. Thank you, Cory and Deverne for all your support. See the previous two blog post to get a better sense of the progress. In the coming days, the owners of the house will be sending
out a crowd-funding appeal for help with this restoration work. Stay tuned for
further updates.

5 September 2017: Nulla dies sine linea

[Today, near the beginning of a new month traditionally associated with the first day of school we begin a new feature to replace the long-running "Today in Bishop." Each day we hope to post a brief reflection on a line from Bishop's poetry, beginning with the title of the first poem in her first book, North & South. We would be happy to have contributions from the Patronage-at-Large, should anyone be so inclined.]

"The Map"

Not simply "Map": abstract, generalized, a concept more than an object, perhaps not even a noun at all, but an imperative, an imperious directive; nor yet "A Map": token of a type, a random example run across by chance, perhaps, on the dusty dark-fumed oak table in the centre of Marks & Co. once-upon-a-time during a long-anticipated visit to 84, Charing Cross Road just prior to its burial beneath a modernist glass tower, where its once-upon-a-place is now marked by a memorial plaque; no, no, no — "The Map" — unique, archetypal, redolent of all that makes it one-and-only, but also a congeries of interwoven metonymies as patterned and abundant as the sixth of the "La Dame à la licorne" Flemish tapestries ("À mon seul désir") or as Vermeer's "De Soldaat en het Lachende Meisje"— or, yet again, as the map in EB's "Primer Class."

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John Barnstead

I retired in 2014 after forty years of teaching Russian language and literature. I'm a past president of the Elizabeth Bishop Society of Nova Scotia.

Sandra Barry

I am a poet, independent scholar, freelance editor, and secretary of the Elizabeth Bishop Society of Nova Scotia.

Suzie LeBlanc

I am a professional singer who recently became a great admirer of Elizabeth Bishop's writing. I am also fond of walking and nature and I became involved with the Elizabeth Bishop Centenary because I wanted to have her poems set to music so that I could sing them.